For years, fragile articles such as eggs have been customarily sold at retail in closed cartons with each carton including a cellular tray normally accommodating a dozen eggs, and a cover, or cover sections, hingedly connected to the upper edge portion of the tray. When the cover, or cover sections, were adjusted to a closed position, the eggs were substantially concealed within the carton.
Recently, however, it has become popular for retailers to merchandise eggs in quantities of more than one dozen. The increased popularity of purchasing at one time such quantities is due in part to (a) the customer seeking to make fewer visits to the retail store during a given period of time; (b) buying eggs in the larger quantities oftentimes enables the customer to take advantage of reduced sales prices when they occur; and (c) facilitates the handling and storage of such quantities.
Cartons to accommodate more than a dozen eggs have heretofore been proposed; however, because of certain inherent design characteristics, they have been beset with one or more of the following shortcomings: (1) the carton is structurally weak and does not provide adequate protection for the accommodated articles; (2) the carton is incapable of accommodating articles which vary in size over a wide range; (3) the carton, when loaded and arranged in stacked relation with other loaded cartons of like design, results in the accommodated articles supporting substantially the entire weight of the loaded cartons positioned thereabove; (4) the carton is susceptible to being tampered with and the contents thereof pilfered or damaged without this fact being readily apparent to the customer unless the customer carefully inspects the carton and its contents at the time of purchase; (5) the carton is costly to manufacture and does not have an aesthetically appealing appearance; (6) the carton is not readily capable of being loaded by conventional high-speed loading equipment; and (7) a plurality of empty cartons cannot be readily nested with one another so as to form a compact stack or bundle suitable for storage or shipment to a retailer for subsequent loading.